Elon Musk is sabotaging Linda Yaccarino after hiring the former head of advertising at NBCUniversal Media to run social-media platform X. Despite her efforts, Musk is “undermining her in virtually everything she does.”
That’s the message from Lou Paskalis, a longtime marketing executive who is chief strategy officer for Ad Fontes Media, in this interview with Beet.TV.
Particularly irksome to Paskalis is the amount of propaganda and misinformation that’s showing up on X, as Twitter was renamed, since the start of the war in Israel. He said he can’t recommend to any brand that they buy advertising on X.
“I can’t think of a justification to return to X at this time in spite of the tremendous efforts that Linda Yaccarino has made to improve the platform,” Paskalis said to Beet.TV contributor Mike Shields at a yearly summit hosted by the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement.
Paskalis said he was encouraged by regulatory efforts to crack down on X, citing a letter that European Union commissioner Thierry Breton this week sent to Musk. The letter warned Musk to comply with laws against propaganda or face fines.
“Following the terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas against Israel, we have indication that your platform is being used to disseminate illegal content and disinformation in the EU,” Breton wrote in a letter to Musk. “Let me remind you that the Digital Services Act sets very precise obligations regarding content moderation.”
Musk replied on X: “Our policy is that everything is open source and transparent, an approach that I know the EU supports. Please list the violations you allude to on X, so that that the public can see them. Merci beaucoup.”
